Sarah Kendzior is an expert on Central Asian autocracies and has been warning us about Trump, Russia, the media, kleptocracies, etc., for at least two years. She has been tireless in that endeavor, sharing many other experts’ clear-eyed takes on our current American path. Sometimes she re-tweets things multiple times (her own Tweets or others) because they are so pithy, accurate, evergreen, and sometimes it takes us a few repetitions to get it.

Yesterday she retweeted the quote by Gillian Flynn, which she’d already retweeted at least two times, commenting (again) “I’ll never get this Gillian Flynn quote out of my mind, because it’s true.” For some reason the word “never” sent me back to the original column, which was very painful, as were many of the replies on Twitter to Sarah’s re-tweet. For Sarah, the new awareness just seemed to be a new truth that she was examining over and over in order to decide where it should be filed in her woman’s toolbox of knowledge and wisdom. Painful, perhaps, but not soul-destroying.

For Gillian Flynn this new awareness (shared publicly in December 2017) seemed to indicate a deeper pain, a pain that other women shared (based on the Twitter replies) and that I also shared at one time—the pain of feeling, as a woman, existentially trapped by nature.

Flynn may have, by now, moved beyond the initial feeling. I can confirm that getting past that trapped feeling can be done, although it took me many years. For me, with no internet at the time, it was done through solitary study of all kinds–mostly books and articles.

In the interest of helping women who are still feeling or newly feeling existentially trapped–as if it is nature’s design to make women feel shamed, second-class, like livestock—here are some of the resources that helped me, as well as a few more recent ones that only confirm women’s existential value. All of these have helped me to understand how it isn’t nature’s design for women to feel like livestock. Many of these resources make clear that in fact nature’s design is just the opposite. See list below.

WOMEN’S PERSONAL AND PUBLIC AUTHORITY
The next question is, then what do we do about it? Some of these resources have answers. All of them do what Kim Chernin asked for years ago: “I needed someone who’d been sticking up for the female side from the beginning.” (Reinventing Eve: Modern Woman in Search of Herself, 1987)

At the age of 67 I don’t pretend to understand everything about life, about so much unnecessary suffering, or about men. But I do understand myself (more or less) and women’s central role to the species. As Kay Cordell Whitaker’s teacher told her: “Women are the center.” Period. Healthy cultures get built on that foundation—or they don’t get built.

I now put much of my own energy into promoting “women’s public authority”. While American women have been working on equality with men, they forgot to promote important differences that would actually make a difference between a peaceful, healthy society and a nasty, destructive one.

Mostly I share information about the Iroquois League—which was the precursor to the U.S. Constitution—and which codified women’s public authority almost 900 years ago, in ways many American women haven’t yet imagined. This seems to be especially true for women trained in the Abrahamic religions (Judeo-Christian-Islamic). There are other versions of human culture than this nasty, Puritanical, patriarchal one.

I might also suggest that, as we try to imagine a different world than the one we’re living in right now, American women should consider that the isolated nuclear family is really an aberration in human culture. For the most part, it seems to be a negative aberration. Women benefit from living more communally. There is not just one model.

PS re: Education of males in American culture (of particular interest today, Sept. 26, 2018, in the midst of the hearings on Brett Kavanaugh for Supreme Court justice):

Gillian Flynn’s article ends with her suggestion for ending the treatment of women as livestock: educate our boys. I don’t disagree with the general idea, although I believe it was Adrienne Rich (many years ago) who gave the lie to that method in terms of a one-on-one project—one mother, one son. But current discussions about boys’ high schools, sports teams, etc., are certainly pointing to a collective discussion about how we educate boys. I support such discussions—at every level of our government and educational systems. And I support similar discussions on how we educate girls, how we see ourselves as women, and—most importantly—women’s public authority.

RESOURCES: “Sticking up for the Female Side from the Beginning”Here are my suggestions for counteracting attacks on women’s personal authority and for promoting women’s public authority. (Most of these resources are non-denominational, earth-based, and plain spoken.)

Story of an American trained by S. American shamans
BOOK: Reluctant Shaman, by Kay Cordell Whitaker (first book) 1991
BOOK: Sacred Link, by Kay Cordell Whitaker (second book) 2005Chapter 8: The Power of the Forbidden Fruit is all about women’s medicines (women’s powers)

VIDEO: Listen to your Mother 11 minutes
by Barbara Alice Mann
A (M)otherworld is Possible: Two Feminist Visions: Matriarchal Studies and the Gift Paradigm
May 2012

SPEECH: Rematriation of the Truth
by Barbara Alice Mann (Bear clan, Ohio Seneca) 2011
“‘Rematriation’” retools culture in terms of matriarchal giving. Regarding speech, it means that the Gift of Breath replicates reality; it does not invent some myth convenient to bullies.”

ONLINE COMMUNITY: Net of Light: Grandmothers Speak
www.netoflight.org
Started by a therapist who started channeling a council of grandmothers in 1997.
Three books filled with the grandmothers’ visitations.
International organization that is appealing to all sorts of women (and men).
Sign up for occasional newsletter with positive messages.
Occasional gatherings in US and worldwide.

IN CASE OF CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS….Start here: The Great Law of Peace

Posted September 6, 2018

I agree with those who say that Americans are in a constitutional crisis in 2018. I believe that the most unifying, sanity-inducing, and relief-giving activity that we can do right now is to learn the details of the Great Law of Peace and how the Iroquois League implemented their constitution. Americans who are looking for new options for action or a liberating framework for real democracy will be greatly refreshed by this comparatively ancient vision that manifested on this very land.

IROQUOIS CONSTITUTION — The Great Law of Peace
If I understand my readings correctly, the Great Law of Peace was codified around 1142 and is still operational. Like most Americans educated in the last 60 years, I knew that the Iroquois Constitution had informed the writing of the U.S. Constitution. But I did not know why certain ideas were adopted by the Founding Fathers while others were omitted. That was partly because the details known by scholars in the 1960s-1990s were not widely disseminated and partly because the scholars studying the Great Law of Peace were not American Indians. It was also partly because the Indians east of the Mississippi needed more time to resuscitate themselves and their culture, having been the frontline resistance to European conquest.

But in 2000, a scholar of the Bear clan, Seneca nation — Barbara Alice Mann, professor of humanities at University of Toledo — published a comprehensive description of the Iroquois Constitution and how it compared to the U.S. Constitution. Her book is IROQUOIAN WOMEN: THE GANTOWISAS, where Gantowisas translates variously as clan mothers, government women, mature woman acting in her public capacity.

Since I read the book in 2015, I have been searching for related materials on the Great Law of Peace. But nothing compares with the breadth, depth, and storytelling that is contained in this book, a heavily annotated, bibliographed, indexed, but highly readable one. It is literary, entertaining, humorous, and deadly serious—a perfect match for this moment in American life when more and more people are waking up to the seriousness of self-governance and to the confusions in American discourse.

STEPS TO RESOLVE A 2018 CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS
1. As a first step for moving through this constitutional crisis, here is a brief summary of the Iroquois Constitution’s principles and structures, as well as some resources for further thought and discussion. See below.

2. A second step would be to connect to the living Haudenosaunee people and organizations to see if they might be willing to help all of us understand how the Great Law of Peace can be applied to the U.S. in the 21st century.

3. A third step could be a national book club (year-long?) to read the U.S. Constitution, the Iroquois Constitution, and any other resources that might help us update our “rulebook” (a term used by historian Nancy MacLean).

4. A fourth step could be Constitutional Conventions in every state and territory (including Washington, DC) to explore amendment proposals that would enable more practical and comprehensive implementation of our collective ideals. The ideal convention process would be to include everyone who wasn’t included in the drafting of the 1787 document–American Indians, women, African-Americans, and every living American adult (voting age).

SUMMARY OF IROQUOIS CONSTITUTION
1. Foundational Principles
These two paragraphs from Prof. Mann’s eye-opening book (Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas) present a succinct comparison of the founding principles of the United States with the pillars of the Iroquois League.

pp. 212 -13
“It is interesting to me that, in all of the debate furiously raging ever since Bruce Johansen’s Forgotten Founders (1982) rubbed academia’s nose in the fact that the authors of the U.S. Constitution had been strongly influenced by the Iroquoian Great Law, few have noticed the main disparity between Iroquoia and the United States. It was not the political presence or absence of women, or trial by jury, or a standing army, or any of a dozen other, readily spotted political differences that marked the distinction. It was, instead, the failure of the Founding Fathers also to adopt and adapt the Iroquoian system of grass–roots economics that complemented its political base of Ne” Gashasde”’sa’ (popular sovereignty).

“The true failure of the resultant hybrid lay in the unthinking assumption by the Founding Fathers that European war-lord economics and Haudenosaunee Ne” gashasde”’sa’ could operate in harness without the plunder economics of Europe throwing the political system of Ne” Gashasde”’sa’ into disarray. By furthermore ignoring the sibling principles of Ne” Sken’no” (Health) and Ne” Gai’ihwiio (Righteousness) as practical tools of economic prosperity (as opposed to mere moralistic pieties), the Founding Fathers sabotaged hopes for real participatory democracy by writing the proprietary economics of Europe into their Constitution. It is this mismatch of popular but unfunded sovereignty bound to the naked exploitation of capitalism that is short-circuiting American Ne” gashasde”’sa’ today, subverting the political will of the people through the undue economic pressures exerted by a financially privileged elite. No such unbalancing access was possible in the prototype, however, for the clan level where Ne” Gashasde”’sa’ was fomented was also the level at which the confederated economy was managed. Power, will, and weal did not trickle down in Iroquoia; they percolated up.”

2. Foundational Structures
Most of these basic structures are codified in the Great Law of Peace and discussed in great detail in Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas.

3. Resources for the Great Law of Peace
a. PRIMARY SOURCES
— BOOK: Iroquoian Women: The Gantowisas (2000), by Barbara Alice Mann (Bear clan, Seneca), Prof. – Humanities, Univ. of Toledo. So far as I can tell, no other resource provides the level of detail that is included in Prof. Mann’s book about life in the Iroquois League.
— VIDEO on history of Iroquois Constitution (no title). Presentation by Barbara Alice Mann at 2nd World Congress on Matriarchal Studies (Texas State University, 2005, presented by Societies of Peace). 43 mins. + 10 mins. questions. Audio quality not great, but the content is astounding.
— BOOK: Basic Call to Consciousness (2005), ed. by Akwesasne Notes
Includes 1977 speech at United Nations (Geneva): Haudenosaunee Address to the Western World
— WEBSITE: Iroquois Constitution, an English translation, by Arthur C. Parker (Seneca)
Prepared by Gerald Murphy, The Cleveland Free-Net, the National Public Telecomputing Network.
— MUSEUM: Ganondagan—Seneca Art & Culture Center (Victor, NY)
— EXHIBIT: ‘Hodinöhsö:ni’ Women: From the Time of Creation’ (2-year exhibit, 2018-20) at Ganondagan
Article: Exhibit at Ganondagan’s Seneca Art & Culture Center Honors Women as Sacred Creators (May 2018), by Vincent Schilling, Indian Country Today
— HERITAGE CENTER: Ska-nonh—Great Law of Peace Center (Liverpool, NY)

4. Current Constitutional Resources
—BOOK: Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (2017), by Nancy MacLean, Prof. – History, Duke University. The last chapter (Get Ready, pp. 222-29) covers some plans to alter “the most important rulebook, the U.S. Constitution”.
—PROJECT: Comparative Constitutions Project — Informing Constitutional Design. Through the subsidiary Constitute Project, CCP makes available the texts of active constitutions worldwide. Unfortunately, their database starts with documents written in 1787 and does not include the Great Law of Peace.
—SHORT ESSAY — a Politico Big Idea: The Constitution Needs a Reboot (Sept. 2018)
by Sanford V. Levinson, professor at University of Texas
–BOOK: A More Perfect Constitution (2007), by Larry Sabato, Prof – Political Science, University of Virginia. Suggests a national Constitutional Convention + 23 proposals for amending the Constitution. Also video (2008) and website.